We are now on Part 4 and it might seem we are gilding the Lilly.
But here’s the thing: What is going on in the Persian Gulf is rotten beyond words. The rogue madman in the Oval Office has detonated a conflagration there that could send the entire global economy and financial system spiraling into a catastrophe – and not just because or even mainly due to the 23 million barrels of oil per day at risk out of 105 million needed worldwide.
What’s really at risk is the underlying global financial system. The latter is a veritable house of cards sitting upon a mountain of debt, leverage and speculative excess. So it may not have the capacity or resilience to withstand a sudden $200 per barrel oil shock.
Yet and yet. The whole insanely reckless act of launching a sweeping military attack on a nation of 90 million people that had zero capacity to impose military harm on the home territory of the United States is predicated on one of the Great Big Stinking Lies of History. Namely, that the Iranian regime is a uniquely evil stain on the face of the earth and has spent 47 years bringing injury, mayhem and death to America and much of the region around it.
The truth, however, is there’s nothing especially unique about Iran’s manifold sins at all. It’s just another run-0f-the-mill authoritarian state run by a medieval theocracy that has imposed one of the most benighted tyrannies of modern times. Accordingly, it has brought untold hardships and miseries to its people—especially via the brutal ruffians of the IRGC.
But that’s mainly the unfortunate work of the clerics and their IRGC allies ruling inside its borders. When it comes to the outside world, Iran has invaded not a single neighboring country since 1979 (and indeed, not in the last 300 years before the mullahs). At the time time, it was savagely attacked by Saddam Hussein with US and European arms during the 1980s; has been brutally sanctioned by Washington trade embargoes and economic warfare for the past 30 years; and for decades has also been relentlessly assaulted via Israeli assassination squads, saboteurs and periodic missiles and bombs.
In fact, the whole “leading state sponsor of terror” slogan has more validity as a Bibi Netanyahu campaign theme than it does as an accurate description of the real world.
And, no, the “whadabout the proxies” canard doesn’t cut it, either. Not a single one of Iran’s so-called “proxies” in the region were confected out of whole cloth by the mullahs as some kind of mercenary force recruited, trained and financed by Tehran and artificially implanted in the soil of Lebanon, Syria, Yemen and Gaza.
To the contrary, the first three of these represented Shiite populations, which aligned with their Shiite brethren in Iran out of confessional ties and due to the fact that they were imperiled in their home countries. After all, there was no Hezbollah until Israel invaded southern Lebanon in the early 1980s and imposed a harsh occupation that left tens of thousands dead, culminating in the genocidal atrocities at Sabra and Shatila.
Likewise, the late Assad government in Syria was Alawite, which is a Shiite branch, and had been at war with Israel off and on since 1967 under Bashar Assad and his father before him. Whatever the merits of its half-century long struggle with the Israelis, the Assad regime didn’t need any new marching orders from Tehran to become a “proxy”.
Even in the case of Yemen, the country has been divided and wracked by civil war conditions since the 1960s as regionally based Shiite and Sunni factions battled for power. The Houthi faction domiciled in the north and west of Yemen, of course, is Shiite and made an alliance with Tehran. Not surprisingly, the southern and eastern Sunni areas of the country were aligned with the Sunni monarchy of Saudi Arabia, which has waged war against the Houthi much of the time since 2015.
Finally, however evil the Hamas forces surely are, they were not born, bred and raised by the mullahs. If anything, the Israeli sponsored open air prison in Gaza and five brutal episodes of “mowing the lawn” via vicious bombing campaigns since 2007 were more than enough to explain the rise of Hamas.
In fact, Hamas was mainly Sunni, not Shiite, and was aligned with Iran only out of having a common enemy. Even then, most the the suitcases full of cash that Netanyahu permitted to come into Gaza year after year before October 7th was Sunni money from the Gulf states, not Iranian proxy finance.
So, yes, there has been a goodly amount of conflict and violence in the region, but it was not robotically commanded by the Ayatollahs. It was deeply rooted in the indigenous conflicts of the region that long pre-dated the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
The common thread, course, is that all four of these forces were indigenous to the region and had a beef with Israel separate and apart from anything happening in Tehran. That’s mainly because each of these groups were directly attacked or demonized by Bibi Netanyahu for deep reasons of Israeli politics.
For instance, the only reason Hamas thrived as long as it did is that Bibi Netanyahu financed it via Qatar in order weaken the Palestinian Authority. In turn, that cynical ploy was aimed to sidecar any eventual implementation of the Oslo Accords and a two-state solution on the grounds the Palestinians were so divided and violent that there was “no one to negotiate with”.
In any event, the gist for the 47-Years War on America Lie stems almost entirely from Israel’s on-going battle with the four mis-labeled “proxies” and Washington’s repeated interventions, funding and international political and diplomatic support for Israel. And even then, taking sides in this manner had no benefit whatsoever for the homeland security of America.
Yet it was the unnecessary and avoidable fallout from consistently taking sides with Israel against these regional foes that gives rise to the hoary myth that Iran has murdered more than 1,000 Americans over the 47 years since the Revolution. Yet a simply fact check conducted by Grok 4 at our request debunks this endlessly chanted claim lock, stock and barrel.
The table below lists every event between 1979 and the present that allegedly gave rise to Iranian murders of Americans—along with the numbers of purported victims and the circumstances of the attack. Some of these are far fetched, indeed, but to give benefit of the doubt we included each and everyone of them.
But here are the key realities:
- Not one of the 1,050 American deaths during this period occurred on American soil.
- Exactly 1,041 of these deaths occurred at the hands of alleged Iranian proxies versus only 9 attributable to Iranian military or other government agencies.
- Fully 1,000 or 96% of the America deaths happened in the context of US military deployments to the region and the resulting active wars and peacekeeping activities in Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, Yemen and adjacent territories and coastal waters
That’s right. Not one of these US military deployments from the Beirut Marine barracks forward was necessary for America’s homeland security. To the contrary, all were elective wars undertaken pursuit to the imperatives of Empire. Accordingly, the resulting deaths are due to putting American military and civilian personal wrongfully in harms’s way – and most especially from taken sides in local and regional military conflicts that were none of Washington’s business.
Footnotes
¹ Central estimate from itemized events (~971) plus modest additions for broader proxy support (e.g., Afghanistan, scattered post-2011 attacks), consistent with U.S. government compilations citing over 1,000 linked deaths.
² No confirmed fatal attacks by Iranian agencies/proxies on U.S. mainland soil.
³ Direct actions only (e.g., Karbala planning/execution, Levinson death in custody, select direct strikes); vast majority of fatalities are via proxies.
⁴ Proxy groups (e.g., Hezbollah, Hamas, Kataib Hezbollah, other militias); calculated as total minus direct govt figure.
⁵ Overseas military-focused incidents (e.g., Beirut bombings, Khobar Towers, Iraq 603, recent bases); this dominates the total. These figures draw from reliable sources like the Pentagon (e.g., 603 in Iraq), White House/State Department (e.g., 46 on October 7), and think tanks (FDD, AJC); exact attribution varies slightly due to classification or indirect responsibility debates.
In short, the 1,000 American deaths chant is completely and hideously wrong because these figures resulted from Washington-initiated military actions in the Mideast that were wholly unjustified; and, consequently, put American lives in harms’ way against local people who had reason to defend themselves from actual or potential US military assault.
Thus, while all of these deaths were tragic and unnecessary, the neocon exploitation and lies about them needs be subject to withering ridicule. That is to say, things that didn’t need to happen owing to Washington’s fault over nearly a half-century do not remotely amount to a causus belli in any rational world.
Indeed, even if you consider these unfortunate deaths as abstract statistics without context or blame, there is absolutely no cause to start a quasi-world war in the Persian Gulf, which supplies a crucial share of the world’s crude oil, refined petroleum, LPGs, liquefied natural gas, industrial sulfur and helium crucial to semi-conductor chip production, among others.
To the contrary, the unhinged madman domiciled in the all powerful Oval Office has the region and the US and global economy on the edge of catastrophic upheaval based on an utterly untruthful narrative about 1,050 American deaths during the last 47 years that were far exceeded by the ordinary course accidents and hazards of daily life in America during that same period, such as fatalities from:
- Powered Lawnmower Accidents: 3,200 deaths.
- Bee Stings: 3,900 deaths.
- Falling out of Bed:10,300 deaths.
- Visiting Mexico: 4,000 American murdered there.
- Lighting strikes: 2,000 deaths.
- Cardiac arrest during sex: 8,000 deaths.
- The Sackler Family: 500,000 deaths.
For want of doubt that the American deaths that Trump claims to be avenging occurred after Washington had essentially declared war on Iran during the 1980s, consider the so-called Tanker War and the shoot-down of Iran Air Flight 655 by the US Navy in July 1988.
As it happened, President Reagan had wisely redeployed the US Marine contingent from Beirut to an aircraft carrier positioned deep in the Mediterranean in February 1984. Yet that prudent action was by no means the end of Washington’s pointless meddling in the Persian Gulf region. In fact, Washington’s foolish “tilt to Iraq” actually escalated soon thereafter when the so-called “Tanker War” between Iraq and Iran incepted a few months later.
With the land war stalemated, the conflict had spilled into the Gulf, with both sides targeting tankers to starve the other’s economy. It was Iraq, however, which initiated the attacks in the spring of 1984 on Iranian shipping to disrupt Tehran’s oil revenues, using French-supplied Exocet missiles from Mirage jets and Super Frelon helicopters. Iran retaliated shortly thereafter against Iraqi and neutral tankers, especially those from Saddam’s close ally in Kuwait, employing mines, speedboats and Silkworm missiles.
Nevertheless, no oil tankers were actually sunk and while war risk premiums rose considerably from 0.3% of hull value before the Tanker War to 2% to 3% at times during the next three years, the so called tanker war did materially impair the average volume of about 10 million barrels per day flowing through the Strait of Hormuz or impact the world oil price adversely.
Accordingly, the ballyhooed Tanker War didn’t really amount to a hill of beans in the scheme of things. During the period before explicit US entry into the naval battles in June 1987, the annual number of tanker trips through the Straight of Hormuz empty and then returning loaded averaged just over 6,000 per year.
And while light damage occurred to this tanker traffic occasionally owing to missile strikes after the Tanker War incepted, the total number of strikes during the next 42 month period by the Iraqi aggressor was 181 or just under 1% of the cumulative tanker traffic during the period. At the same time, the comparable numbers for Iran was 106 strikes and 0.5% of two-way traffic thru Hormuz.
Either way, it wasn’t a biggie from the point of view of upwards of 500 tankers passing in and out of the Strait of Hormuz on an average monthly basis during the period.
Impact Of Tanker War Strikes on Two-Way Traffic Thru The Strait of Hormuz, 1984 to June 1987
Needless to say, the impact on the world oil price, which on the margin is set by flows from the Persian Gulf, was essentially undecipherable. Indeed, owing to offsetting factors in the world market, such as the rise of production in the North Sea, Alaska, Saudi Arabia and elsewhere, as well as steadily improving global energy efficiency, the world oil price actually dropped from $40 per barrel at the 1980 peak to as low as $15 per barrel by 1986.
In fact, at the cycle bottom in 1986 high cost producers like those in the Lower 48 of the USA plunged into a veritable oil patch depression.
Thus, even when the tanker war intensified in early 1987, the world oil price rebounded temporarily to just $20 per barrel, but in inflation-adjusted terms that was barely one-third of peak prices just seven years earlier. In a word, therefore, Mr. Market was doing his job encouraging both increased production and improved energy use per dollar of GDP virtually the world over. He didn’t need any help from the US Navy.
World Oil Price (WTI), 1980 to 1989
At no time during the Tanker War, therefore, was there any reason for US naval involvement in the Persian Gulf on the grounds of stabilizing the world oil commerce and price.
Of course, that’s not a valid basis for US military action abroad, anyway. The only valid reason for military engagement with foreign powers is to counter threats to the American Homeland, but the latter was obviously not threatened in any way, shape or form by the Iran/Iraq tanker war.
Nevertheless, the keepers of Empire on the banks of the Potomac couldn’t keep their nose out of other people’s business in the context of Washington’s unaccountable tilt to Iraq. So President Reagan was persuaded to authorize Operation Earnest Will on July 24, 1987, which then became the largest U.S. naval convoy operation since World War II.
It involved re flagging Kuwaiti tankers and escorting them with warships like the USS Vincennes. The latter which was deployed to the Gulf in order to counter Iranian “swarm” tactics such as those employed by IRGC speedboats to harass shipping.
Ironically, however, Washington’s plunge into the tanker war in mid-1987 had come on the heels of what should have been a clear wake-up call about the folly of messing around (FAFO) in the midst of a hot war in the Persian Gulf. To wit, in May 1987, Iraqi Mirage war planes had launched a mistaken “fog of war” friendly fire attack via an Exocet attack on the USS Stark, killing 37 US sailors aboard and damaging the vessel so badly that its eventual rehabilitation cost more than $180 million.
So a sobering warning about putting American military personnel in harms’ way for no good reason of homeland security was given in a loud and clear manner. But shortly thereafter as the US escalation peaked in April 1988 under Operation Praying Mantis, another US warship called the USS Samuel B. Roberts hit an Iranian mine causing more deaths and damage.
Accordingly, by July 1988 the Vincennes was on high alert and had repeatedly engaged IRGC patrol boats. But then disaster struck.
On the morning of July 3, 1988, Iran Air Flight 655, an Airbus A300B2-203 operated by Iran’s national airline, departed from Bandar Abbas International Airport in southern Iran. The flight was a routine commercial route from Tehran to Dubai via a stopover in Bandar Abbas, carrying 290 people—including 208 adult passengers, 66 children and 16 crew members. Most were Iranian nationals, but the manifest included 10 Indians, 6 Emiratis, 1 Italian, and others from various nationalities. The plane was fully loaded, ascending normally on a well-established commercial airway known as Amber 59, over Iran’s territorial waters in the Strait of Hormuz.
As it happened, Bandar Abbas was a dual-use airport, serving both civilian and military purposes. This undoubtedly added to the subsequent confusion because Iranian F-14 Tomcat fighters – U.S.-made jets sold to Iran before the 1979 Revolution – were based there, making the area a hotbed of military activity in the midst of the ongoing Iran-Iraq War. Just minutes before takeoff, the USS Vincennes(CG-49), which was a Ticonderoga-class guided-missile cruiser equipped with the advanced Aegis combat system, was engaged in a surface skirmish with Iranian gunboats about 40 nautical miles southwest of Bandar Abbas.
The Vincennes, under Captain William C. Rogers III, had entered Iranian territorial waters earlier that morning while pursuing Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) speedboats that had reportedly fired on a U.S. helicopter from the frigate USS Sides – again a consequence of Washington’s foolish tilt to Saddam.
The resulting engagement escalated into a firefight, with the Vincennes and another US warship, the frigate USS Elmer Montgomery. These two US Navy vessels then exchanged fire with up to 13 Iranian small boats armed with machine guns and rocket launchers. Amid this chaos, the Vincennes’ radar detected Flight 655 climbing from Bandar Abbas at about 350 knots (approximately 400 mph), heading southwest toward Dubai – directly toward the Vincennes‘ position.
At that point, the Vincennes’ Combat Information Center operators misidentified the ascending airliner as a descending Iranian F-14, possibly on an attack run. The Aegis system, designed for high-threat environments, displayed the plane’s transponder signal as Mode III (civilian), but crew members reportedly saw conflicting data, interpreting it as Mode II (military).
The plane was broadcasting on the international air distress frequency and squawking a civilian IFF code, but the Vincennes crew believed it was mimicking an F-14’s tactics. Stress from the ongoing gunboat battles, combined with “scenario fulfillment” (where operators fit data to expected threats), led to the ensuing catastrophic error.
Captain Rogers issued seven radio warnings over military and civilian channels, urging the aircraft to change course or identify itself, but Flight 655’s pilots, focused on their commercial flight path and communicating with air traffic control, did not respond. That’s likely because they were not monitoring the military frequency by which the Vincennes was pinging.
So at about 10:30 AM, with the airliner at 13,500 feet and 11 nautical miles away, Rogers authorized the launch of two SM-2MR surface-to-air missiles. The first struck the plane’s right wing, causing it to disintegrate mid-air. Debris and body parts rained into the Strait of Hormuz.
All 290 aboard perished instantly or on the impact with the water. Iranian rescue teams recovered 246 bodies, many mutilated by the explosion or mangled by shark attacks. The black boxes were never found, as they sank in deep waters.
Initial U.S. reports claimed the plane was descending aggressively outside its corridor, mistaken for an F-14. However, a later Pentagon investigation (the Fogarty Report) clarified that the plane was ascending on its standard route at normal speed. The error was attributed to human factors – combat stress, poor data interpretation, and the Aegis system’s limitations in distinguishing civilian from military targets in crowded airspace. Naturally, Iran condemned it as a deliberate act of terrorism, citing U.S. support for Iraq and prior Gulf incidents.
Needless to say, this disaster did more to reinforce the regime’s “Great Satan” propaganda against America than any other event in the last 47 years. So surely a profuse apology and generous compensation by Washington were in order.
And yet and yet – it was not forthcoming. In fact, George HW Bush, the hard-nosed ex-CIA director, and current US Vice President campaigning for President, infamously made it clear at a UN speech that no American apology would be forthcoming, saying—-
I will never apologize for the United States – I don’t care what the facts are… I’m not an apologize-for-America kind of guy.
Of course, less than two years later that same George HW Bush had switched sides abruptly. That is to say, after America’s Iraqi ally in the Iranian airliner incident attacked Kuwait in a petty argument over directional drilling in the giant Rumalia oilfield that straddled the border of the two erstwhile partners, Bush declared that Saddam’s purported “aggression” against Kuwait “will not stand”, thereby launching the First Gulf War in early 1990.
Well, for crying out loud. To the question what was ever at stake with respect to the only valid reason for attacking any foreign nation, which is an actual or imminent attack on the homeland territory of the USA, the answer was absolutely nothing from the time of the hostage crisis at the US embassy in Tehran, to the tilt to Iraq when the 1980s war broke out with its neighbor, to the US Marines deployment to Beirut, to the Persian Gulf Tanker War, to the hideous act of shooting-down a civilian airliner that was foolishly mistaken for a war plane that does not remotely resemble the Airbus A300 of Flight 655.
Still, that’s where “Iran’s 47-Years War on America” stood at the end of the 1980s. And then, to add insult to injury, the Israeli and Washington neocons went into full-bore war on the Iranian Regime in the 1990s and beyond, as we will amplify in Part 5.
David Stockman was a two-term Congressman from Michigan. He was also the Director of the Office of Management and Budget under President Ronald Reagan. After leaving the White House, Stockman had a 20-year career on Wall Street. He’s the author of three books, The Triumph of Politics: Why the Reagan Revolution Failed, The Great Deformation: The Corruption of Capitalism in America, TRUMPED! A Nation on the Brink of Ruin… And How to Bring It Back, and the recently released Great Money Bubble: Protect Yourself From The Coming Inflation Storm. He also is founder of David Stockman’s Contra Corner and David Stockman’s Bubble Finance Trader.
